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“No money?”
“I took some savings, but I didn’t want Daddy’s money. Not then, anyway.”
“So you were just going to get married, have babies, live a conventional life?” I asked.
“You don’t think when you’re seventeen,” she said. “Hell, sometimes you don’t think when you’re thirty-nine. I knew I was using Leo to get the hell out of Tulsa, and having this kind of gritty, working-class adventure. Sometimes I was very romantic and dreamy. I took a job at a mall. He had this dream of opening a coffeehouse where he could play jazz. Can you believe that, in 1978?” She gave an unhappy laugh. “He was ahead of his time.”
“You make him sound pretty nice,” I said. “Yet he’s been in prison for almost twenty years. We have child murderers who get out sooner than that.”
“That’s your so-called system of justice, Mapstone. Don’t ask me. The families of the dead deputies opposed his parole every year. I’m sure the corrupt cops didn’t want to take a chance of him getting out and talking to the media.”
“But Leo killed a man in prison,” I said. “He couldn’t have been that gentle.”
She was silent for a long time, and when I looked over, her face was red and turbulent.
“Beth, you’re going to have to talk about these things. That’s the only way to help me stop these people who are trying to kill you.” Yes, me the grandiose hero with panic attacks. I added, “It’s the only way to help Leo.”
“This is hard, OK?” she said. “I have a lot of guilt, OK? I guess Leo killed a man. I tried not to think about it. We tried to correspond for a couple of years, but it just got too hard.” She stared over at me. “Do you understand, he was small and young, and they just threw him in with the worst criminals?”
I asked quietly, “He was attacked?”
She nodded. “I’m sure things were even worse than he told me in his letters.”
The Navajo Reservation enfolded us. We skimmed noiselessly through Monument Valley, the mesas and buttes seen in a hundred movies and TV comm
ercials so much more stunning in reality. Patches of snow congregated on the ledges of the big rocks. The sky was a heavy, endless blue. The miles passed quickly at 85.
Beth said, “So you saw pictures of me at Camelback Falls?”
I nodded.
“I was a cute kid, huh?”
“Yeah, Beth. No question.”
“Did the pictures make you hot, Mapstone?”
I didn’t respond or look at her. The road vibrated up through the Chevy’s suspension.
Beth said, “Do you want me to suck your cock?”
The words hung in the air between us. I unconsciously glanced in the rearview mirror. Lindsey was asleep, zipped up in her jacket, sprawled out in the backseat.
Beth said, “Your little friend back there doesn’t have to know. It would be hotter to do it with her asleep just a few inches away”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, come on Mapstone,” her voice trilled. “What were you doing in the seventies when I was partying at Camelback Falls? I bet you wish you were there.” She reached her hand across the bench, brushed her fingers against my crotch. I swatted them away.
“You’re just a coward,” she said.
“You wouldn’t even understand,” I said. Suddenly, my dreamy recollection of last night came into focus, clean, whole. And I felt an anger surging through all my aches and pains.
Beth licked her lips and said, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Chapter Thirty-one
I swerved the big truck off the highway and we landed loudly onto the gravel of the shoulder. I slammed the gearshift into park.
